DEVELOPMENT – BUILDING AT BLAENAVON HIGH LEVEL STATION (Step
1.4.1) – Page 2
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Progress
at Blaenavon (High Level)
Our last upload on this topic was exactly two months
ago. In the interim, work has continued
without a break on the station building at BHL.
It has been a difficult two months.
The days a getting shorther, and there has been increasingly poor
weather, as many in the UK can testify.
Strict financial controls have recently been a problem, though that has
now, and technical problems have resulted in many a furrowed brow. More recently the decision on whether to use
wooden or steel beams to carry the buildings canopy has caused much
discussion. In the end, steel beams were
chosen, but ordering them and the drilling and cutting them ready for installation
was time-consuming. There are seven
beams in total (as there were in the original station building). The beams, which are about 6.8m (22ft 3ins)
long and extend about 2.5m (8ft 3ins) beyond the building, weigh 156kg (342lbs)
each. As laid, the front wall supports
about 80% of the weight of each beam, with the back wall supporting the
remainder. However when the weight of
the canopy structure is added, the beam will tend to tilt about the front wall,
so that the weight borne by the rear wall may even be negative. This demands special fixing methods to ensure
stability. The dynamic loading on the
beams during windy weather will place heavy demands on the structure and
special measures will be employed to allow the canopy surface to lift if conditions
become too bad. Ordering the beams,
cutting and profiling them to shape, and drilling all the necessary mounting
holes took several weekends, and additional time was spent designing and
building the straps which would fix them to the block structure. All in all, the beams became a project in
themselves.
During recent weeks when the wind howled and the
rain lashed, washing newly laid cement directly from the block work, there were
days when it appeared that nothing had been done – and it was sometimes it was
felt that we had even gone backwards, but viewed over a period of two months
the progress has been substantial. The
images below show just how much progress has been made.
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September
was generally a good month, and this image shows that the fireplace,
recovered from the shop (see News, page 3) fitted the embryonic chimney just
perfectly. 0354 – 26 Sep 09 |
Here the
minidigger is busy in loading the first few of the seven canopy support beams
(described in the text), into place, limited lift height and the front wall
meant that there was very limited clearance 0389 – 18 Oct 09 |
The
minidigger needed to be at full height and full stretch to drop the beams
into place, and this view shows just how little room is available at this
point 0390 – 18 Oct 09 |
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The beams
had been transported from Furnace Sidings, where the preparatory work had
been undertaken, in one of the two Grampus wagons. Here is the minidigger lifting one of the
beams. 0392 – 18 Oct 09 |
We knew
that the clearances were going to be tight and that slinging would be a
problem, but once we got the hang of things, and tehered each end, it
progress was smooth and event-free.
Volunteer Ian leads the beam by its tether whilst the digger crawls down
the platform 0396 – 18 Oct 09 |
Here
volunteer 0397 – 18 Oct 09 |
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Six of the seven beams are roughly – very roughly - in position as 0401 – 18 Oct 09 |
The nerve wracking job of getting the beams up is complete, and they
lie higgledy-piggledy on the building walls.
Underneath the New Works team is joined by a few bodies from the PWay
team who have helped during the operation, as they enjoy a cuppa. This was the last decent day of the year 0406 – 18 Oct 09 |
The job of getting the beams the right way up, in their correct
attitude and in their correct position was a job best done by one or two
people in relative peace and quiet and without rush. Here are the beams in position and in a
straight line – but problems remained. 0468 – 26 Oct 09 |
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Along the front wall, the enveloping process is almost complete, with
blocks only required in the most southerly two bays. This was a busy day, with the PWay team
working outside, their Shark is seen through the double doors. 0595 – 15 Oct 09 |
Onlookers sing Pink Floyd’s ‘Another brick in the wall’ as volunteer 0605 – 22 Nov 09 |
Despite getting the beams in the correct position (see image 0468),
several iterations and much time were needed in finally driving out
cumulative errors which made the distance between the sixth and seventh beams
incorrect. 0606 – 22 Nov 09 |
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The back wall is seen completed.
Even with the appalling weather on the day, for the first time, with a
little imagination, it’s possible to envisage a snug station building. 0607 – 22 Nov 09 |
Compared with image 0595, we see the last two bays of blocks completed. The Way team went the previous weekend,
hence the view through the double-doors. The fixing of the straps to the
beams employs a sliding arrangement which permits free thermal longitudinal
expansion of the main beam, whilst constraining it laterally and vertically 0608 – 22 Nov 09 |
Few images have been taken of the south wall, but her it is essentially
complete. The first block of the final course is in place. Beyond this the ‘pine end’ will be built in
light-weight Thermalite blocks, but construction of this latter part will
wait till the roof trusses are up. 0609 – 22 Nov 09 |
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